Obama organizers attempt to rescue Austin TX with Astroturf campaign

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 12:15 pm on May 20, 2010

Last week, the city council of Austin, Texas passed a resolution to boycott Arizona over its new immigration-enforcement law. For those who don’t know much about Texas politics, Austin is as liberal as the rest of the state is conservative. However, in an embarrassing display of just how marginalized the Austin liberals have become, the local newspaper has run 20 letters from readers regarding the council’s boycott — all of them opposed to it.

While the Austin city council has likely not read the bill — and neither has the White House — Barack Obama’s political organizing group has decided to take action to defend Austin’s boycott. Will they actually read the bill? Are they scheduling protests? Not exactly. In an e-mail from Organizing for America that went out last night (and provided to us by a reader), OfA announces an Astroturf campaign to flood the newspaper with letters supporting the boycott:

Wow! Who knew community organizers could be this irrelevant? The Left has seized on letters to the editor just a few years after blogs superceded them for grassroots communication. Further, the message OfA sends is one of desperation. In a town as reliably liberal as Austin, wouldn’t one assume that a few would stand up for the city council — if their action was at all defensible? The fact that no one seems willing to fight for this silly boycott makes it clear just how important it is to the Statesman’s readers.

They’re practically marching themselves into irrelevance at OfA. For that matter, so is the Austin city council. Don’t they have anything better to do?